Computer exploration

Youth Services hosted kids for a program asking "Do you have the guts to gut our computers?"  26 responded with an enthusiastic "YES!" and had a great time learning the parts of the computer checking out the inside. Keyboards and mice were also available.  Participants had a great time and are looking forward to another session.  

Lucky we got this picture early.  The motherboard was out of this machine in less than 15 minutes:

We had 5 stations each with their own equipment to work on:

Lots of teamwork, some due to the sharing of tools:

All tables ended up looking like this:

Three of the five stations:

 

3D Printer Woes....

On Wednesday, we performed a firmware update as directed by the MakerBot desktop software.  After successful update, we proceeded with printing a previously printed small object, just to test.  The carriage had previously stopped at the top-left corner of the build plate.  When the job was submitted, a grinding sound was heard and the carriage did not move.  The printer started extruding plastic in the same corner, no movement, just a glob.  No errors had been displayed up to this point.  We stopped the job and when the printer attempted to move the carriage, the below popped up on-screen:

Turns out the belt had seemingly fallen off track (don't know why) and didn't look to be user serviceable.    We called MakerBot Support (which was very easy and accessible) to help with this issue.  After submitting the pictures below, MakerBot advised that the unit would need to be returned for service.  Now awaiting arrival of the pre-paid shipping materials and will be sending off for repair....